H all, J oseph

Abstract

The earliest works of Joseph Hall (1574–1656), later bishop of Exeter and Norwich, would seem to point towards a literary career. As a scholar and fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, he published two volumes of verse satires ( Virgidemiarum six bookes , 1597–98), wrote the Latin prose narrative Mundus alter et idem (1605), and was probably involved with the ‘Parnassus plays’ produced around 1598–1601. Mundus alter , or ‘Another world and yet the same’, claimed to be the work of ‘Mercurius Britannicus’ and to have been printed in Frankfurt. A satirical utopia, it charted Mercurius's travels through unknown southernlands: Crapulia, populated by gluttons; Viraginia, a gynaecocracy; Moronia, where only fools can survive; and Lavernia, a land of thieves. The text, probably written at a similar time to the publication of Virgidemiarum , was put through the press by William Knight who ironically suggested that the places encountered by Mercurius were ‘the true and living ideal of the world in which we dwell’ (Wands 1981). The text, which went through several European editions, was translated into English as The discovery of a new world by John Healey in 1609 and is considered an important contribution to seventeenth‐century utopian fiction.